Hogs and hammocks: Inside this resilient Smokies farm stay
Mangalitsa pigs still lounge about in paddocks at Smoky Mountain River Ranch, but they’re only one component of the farm’s character. Cory Vaillancourt photo
Tucked away in a gentle bend of a placid river near Iron Duff, Smoky Mountain River Ranch has weathered economic downturns, floods, hurricanes and silent, ceaseless development pressure — all while raising a very special animal those who know call a delicacy.
With resilience and a little creative thinking, the farm’s Haywood County owners are once again welcoming curious campers and in turn helping to redefine what it means to farm, and to survive, in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
OINKONOMICS
Like many across the region in the days leading up to Hurricane Helene, Catherine and Rick Topel were busy preparing for the trouble everyone knew was coming. But that’s easier said than done when you own a 93-acre farm nestled along the Pigeon River and populated mostly by a rare breed of pig.
“Since we’re former yacht captains, we’re always looking at the weather, always planning for the worst-case scenario,” Catherine said. “I actually came across a post by Brad Panovich [chief meteorologist at WCNC in Charlotte] and he was talking about how this could all collide and be somewhat of a perfect storm, so we pulled everything we could.”
Catherine and Rick had spent more than a decade in the ultra-exclusive world of private yachts, working for wealthy clients and crossing the globe whenever the owner of the boat wanted to weigh anchor. As they grew more experienced, Catherine and Rick longed for life on land they’d known before — Catherine was an equestrian and professional golfer, Rick had grown up on a farm in Washington state. In 2017, they purchased Joe Davis’ old dairy farm, on Joe Davis Road, which had become overgrown and was riddled with junk.
By the spring of 2018, they’d cleaned the place up and acquired their first animals — Mangalitsa pigs, which just 20 years prior had only numbered perhaps 200 across the world.
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Mangalitsa, also spelled “Mangalitza” or “Mangalica” originated in the 1830s and is a crossbreed of the European wild boar with Hungarian, Romanian and Serbian species. They are one of only two varieties of pig known to sport a long, wooly coat. They grow quickly.
The breed became well-known in Hungary and through the 1950s was common, but fell out of favor in subsequent decades because they don’t produce enough of the lean meat customers sought out during the cholesterol-obsessed 1980s.
“The difference is, the fat has not been bred out of the pig,” Catherine said. “Also, the musculature is different than any other large breed. It holds more water in the muscle and the fat is marbled through it. The meat is deep red, like beef, which is more appealing than white pork.”
The fat, called lard, is a unique commodity in its own right. Before lard became a dirty word in consumer circles and was eschewed in favor of seed oils, it had been used for centuries for its high smoke point and abundance of vitamins A, C, D and K. It’s also 10% higher in monounsaturated fat and remains mostly liquified at room temperature. In the refrigerator, it assumes a texture only slightly firmer than mayonnaise.
In many countries, especially in eastern Europe, it’s served as a spread where others may use butter, like on bread. It’s also said to provide a delicate, flaky texture when used by scratch bakers for pastries and pie crusts.
Sage rubbed, thyme-encrusted Mangalitsa tomahawk pork chop, smoked over applewood and served with chimichurri. Cory Vaillancourt photo
After a Spanish company became interested in reviving the breed in the 1990s, numbers grew and the world was reintroduced to the unique culinary properties of the Mangalitsa. In the early 2000s, the buzz was significant. Now called the “Kobe beef” of pork, Mangalitsa dishes began to appear on menus outside of Hungary, in places like Thomas Keller’s renowned Napa Valley eatery French Laundry. In 2022, the Topels shipped two Mangalitsas for use in a Michelin Guide gala at the Ritz Carlton Orlando.
“We had over 100 animals. We had commitments from Sierra Nevada, Omni Grove Park Inn, other small grocers that wanted to specialize in niche proteins, and they didn’t buy a single pig,” Catherine said of the COVID-era downturn in sales. “The pig takes two years to raise. Pigs eat twice a day. It’s one of the only kinds of livestock that you can’t just turn out on grass and it will survive, so what was happening is I had a whole lot of inputs into about 20-something animals and no market.”
The Topels rely on Vandele Farms, near Lake Logan, for processing and still sell to the public and to higher-end establishments like the Swag and Cataloochee Ranch, but the stiff retail headwinds would result in their business model taking a different tack.
TENTS AND TENACITY
The Topels’ fight to keep their agricultural operation above water amid multiple challenges has been emblematic of the larger plight of the American farmer over the past several decades.
Last month, at a breakfast held by the Haywood County Farm Bureau, local officials and farmers, along with state and federal officials, gathered to talk about the twin challenges facing Western North Carolina’s agricultural sector — ongoing recovery from Hurricane Helene, and the accelerating loss of prime farmland.
A full 10% of the state’s workforce is employed in the $100 billion industry that is agriculture in North Carolina, but those workers won’t have anywhere to work — and Americans won’t have anything to eat — if there aren’t any farms.
Farm Bureau President Don Smart said at a 2023 event that 40 years ago, Haywood County had more than 80,000 acres of farmland, but now there’s only about 50,000. Development pressures remain, but once prime acreage is topped with homes or businesses, it’s difficult or impossible to reclaim. A 2022 study by the American Farmland Trust reported that North Carolina was the second most at-risk state for loss of farmland through 2040.
After COVID, the Topels probably could have chosen to parcel out their stunning, expansive property to luxury home development — but they didn’t.
Instead, they began setting up riverside campsites and built a small studio-style cabin perched high on a hill overlooking the farm, the river and the Mangalitsa paddocks while also offering a spectacular view of the lush, knobby mountains huddled around it all.
Campsites on the banks of the rejuvenated Pigeon River have themselves been rejuvenated since Hurricane Helene. Cory Vaillancourt photo
“Where we’re offering the camping, we’re not only treading more lightly than any animal would,” she said, “but it can also be reverted to farming in 15 minutes if you wanted because there’s no structures.”
The rejuvenation of the Pigeon River, long called “the dirty bird” due to a century of disruption by a paper mill upriver, has only added to the farm’s allure by allowing for more recreational uses like kayaking and fishing. Catherine said that in the two years since the mill closed, the transformation has been miraculous, creating clear, turquoise pools where before there was only opaque brown muck. Native species have also been returning.
“We have rainbow and brown trout down here since they closed the mill,” she said.
The farm has also served as the location for a number of television commercials and once hosted a private, five-course outdoor dinner for 200 provided by an organization called Outstanding in the Field, a “roving restaurant without walls.”
“We have to stay open to these opportunities, because you have to have several enterprises to create resiliency on your farm,” Catherine said.
Travelers can book the cabin and the campsites through Airbnb, where the property is rated in the top 1% of the more than 9 million properties listed, or on Hipcamp — a sort of Airbnb for campers who prefer tents or RV sites to trendy urban lofts or quiet suburban homes. The property has a 98% rating on Hipcamp and was recently voted as the second most popular site in all of North Carolina.
“We don’t do big events. We don’t host weddings, anything like that,” Catherine said. “We have lots of elopements. They use an organization called Elope Outdoors, where they provide the stylist, the makeup, the officiant. That’s been super-popular. Mostly my guests are coming here for a farm experience.”
To give them that experience, the Topels offer a farm tour, where Catherine takes guests around the property and tells them about the pigs and how they’ve utilized the space without imperiling the rest of the farm.
A small cabin sits perched in a meadow far above the Pigeon River. The Topels plan another, elsewhere, by winter. Cory Vaillancourt photo
“Parents want their kids to understand where their food comes from,” she said. “I’ve had so many children cry when they leave. They do. The parents trust that they’re safe and they can run around and explore.”
But with all the lip service paid to protecting farmland, conservation initiatives fall short of their stated goals in many cases because they’re inflexible.
“We are not in any easement, nor in farm preservation,” Catherine said. “If we had been in farm preservation, we would not have been able to pivot like we did, because farm preservation completely locks you in. We wouldn’t have been able to build our little short term rental cabin, which has been helped sustain this farm.”
TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS OF DISASTER
Moving Mangalitsas from lower paddocks to higher ground in advance of Hurricane Helene wasn’t easy, however the Topels didn’t lose a single one— even the one who didn’t exactly want to follow directions.
“Pigs are actually excellent swimmers,” Catherine laughed.
But the Topels weren’t unscathed after Helene, now noted as one of the state’s costliest disasters with an estimated $60 billion in damage. Catherine called it “the trickle-down economics of disaster.”
First, they lost the entire month of October’s bookings during the busy leaf season — although Catherine did credit Airbnb and Hipcamp with managing the customers, freeing her up to deal with things on the farm. Guests, she said, were especially understanding, with some asking to rebook immediately and others just telling her to keep their money as a donation.
Although many guests stay at the farm for its convenient access to Asheville, the city didn’t have drinking water for weeks after the storm and most tourist-oriented businesses remained closed for quite some time.
The prolonged closure of Interstate 40, which was partially destroyed by Helene, also complicated ongoing reservations at the farm; some guests traveling longer distances find the farm an idyllic midway respite on their journey because it’s only minutes from the interstate. As those travelers found detours, they also found other places to stay. Additionally, a message on GPS networks noted that roads to the farm were closed — but they weren’t. They were closed to tractor-trailers, but few drivers bothered to read the fine print of the warnings.
On the farm itself, Catherine said they lost at least 25 feet of shoreline as the Pigeon River swelled to many times its original volume, felling 80-foot sycamore trees and leaving behind six to 12 feet of mud and silt.
Concerns about the loss of agricultural land were voiced in the immediate aftermath of the storm when state and federal agriculture officials visited Canton in November.
“You look at the Pigeon River here in Haywood County, there are fields that are a third the size that they were before the storm. It’s simply gone. It’s been washed away,” said Kaleb Rathbone, assistant commissioner of agriculture for Western North Carolina and a Haywood County native. “The other piece is production value. A lot of top soil has been washed away, and it’s going to take years to be able to rebuild the fertility of that ground.”
Then, there was the debris, piled against fences and strewn across the shoreline. The craziest thing she found, Catherine said, was the bed of a truck, but it was the litany of smaller personal items that prompted deep reflection.
“Sadly, you do see evidence of people’s lives, you know. Photographs, shoes, things like that. You worry that something horrible had to happen to make that stuff end up on our land,” she said.
Each of the six Mangalitsa paddocks were damaged or destroyed and more than a dozen rolls of hay were spirited away — with some hay still hanging from tree branches 12 to 15 feet above ground level, seven months later. All told, Catherine estimates the damage in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some money came from donations, but most came out of their pockets.
“The government’s not helped us at all,” Catherine said. “And I’ve asked. Trust me, I’ve asked.”
As a small business, Smoky Mountain River Ranch remains in the same situation as other small businesses in the wake of the destruction — essentially left alone. In the months after Helene, North Carolina’s General Assembly passed four relief bills — some of which actually contained hurricane relief funding — but direct grant support to small businesses that had suffered losses never came. While the state was eager to offer low-interest loans with generous terms, many small businesses weren’t in a position to take on additional debt.
After the reopening of Interstate 40 in March and another tough rebuild — the farm also sustained damage during flooding associated with Tropical Storm Fred in August 2021 — the Topels are again open for business, optimistic about contributing to the regional tourism economy and its extant farm-to-table movement. Despite the challenges over the majority of the time they’ve owned the farm, the thought of weighing anchor still hasn’t crossed their minds.
“Never, never, never, never, never,” Catherine said. “We love it here. My family bought a home up here 100 years ago and my mom is still in it, so we know the area and we were always visiting. But we just love it here. We have so many friends and the campers keep us busy and engaged.”
The campers — and the Mangalitsas.
